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Authors: Alexei Sayle
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out loud about the way her sister looked, even though she was just
trying to be helpful, Harriet would go all silent and sulky. She had had to
hold down one arm with the other to stop it snatching her sister’s greasy
spectacles off her nose and giving them a good polish.
As they’d been leaving the
house, out of the corner of her eye Helen saw the businessman who hung around
the area hurry past talking rapidly into his mobile phone, unable to decipher
precisely who he was referring to; she only heard something about….
frizzy-haired midget thinks if a man doesn’t fancy them he’s gay’. Then,’…
told you about him, he looks like one of those big Irish farmers, huge hands,
failed suicide …‘
To
Helen it seemed nice that he had somebody with whom he could share these
thoughts. The Easter when she was thirteen the family had gone on holiday to a
rented villa in ‘Lanzarote, a shabby breezeblock cube but with a swimming pool
and everything. She’d found an old diving mask in a cupboard and had spent
hours each day floating on the warm surface gazing down into the spangly
turquoise-tiled depths, languorously twisting and turning for the eyes of her
ever-present dad.
One
day, as she drifted through the quicksilver chlorine-scented water, the
shrivelled rubber of the mask’s strap suddenly snapped, making her feel as if
she’d been shot in the head, like the rooftop swimmer in Dirty Harry, and
as she watched the mask beneath her dangling, pale feet tumbling down into the
dangerous blue depths Helen lifted her head to look around and saw that her dad
had left the poolside. She wasn’t afraid, there was no risk of her drowning,
but it just seemed there was no certainty any more and the loneliest thing in
the world was to be by yourself in a swimming pool.
That
sense of dislocation stayed with her until the last week of school before the
summer holidays. She was in the school library, hanging around in there because
this group of girls who the day before had been her best friends said they
hated her and suddenly wouldn’t talk to her any more. Seated at one of the long
shiny mahogany worktables, sunlight streaming in thick tubes through the
windows, she was pretending to work on a poem for the school magazine but
instead was flicking through one of the old Sunday Times magazines that
the librarian kept in Perspex binders. In an edition from September 1978
opposite a full-page advert for Ecko Hostess Trolleys there was a photograph,
the black and white image so grainy that it seemed at first to be of bacteria
or something; only slowly did it resolve itself into the sad face of a young
man, a young man with long black ‘hair parted in the centre. As Helen stared
into his soulful eyes she felt an unfamiliar, warm sensation at the base of her
stomach.
Flipping
over the page she greedily dived into the story. His name was Julio Spuciek,
the son of a Ukrainian father and an Argentinian mother; in the 1970s in his
native Argentina he had been
the country’s fifth most celebrated poet, the reserve international goalkeeper
and its most renowned puppeteer. For several years he had made fun of the
authorities on his enormously popular TV and radio shows assisted by his
puppets —Margarita, Tio Pajero, Abuela, El Gordo and Señor Chuckles. When, in a
bloody coup and a wave of terror, the Fascist military junta came to power,
his popularity and his socialism condemned him and he was swept up amongst the
first wave of the disappeared into the notorious prison of El Casero. Yet even
the terrible generals were reluctant to murder a man as popular as Julio
Spuciek and in time they lit on another plan. One cold winter’s day in the grey
yard of the prison of El Casero Julio Spuciek’s puppets were brought out, lined
up. one by one against the exercise yard wall and shot by firing squad.
In the
magazine there were more blurred photos: of the splintered corpses of the
puppets and further colour pictures of the mournful,
trying to be helpful, Harriet would go all silent and sulky. She had had to
hold down one arm with the other to stop it snatching her sister’s greasy
spectacles off her nose and giving them a good polish.
As they’d been leaving the
house, out of the corner of her eye Helen saw the businessman who hung around
the area hurry past talking rapidly into his mobile phone, unable to decipher
precisely who he was referring to; she only heard something about….
frizzy-haired midget thinks if a man doesn’t fancy them he’s gay’. Then,’…
told you about him, he looks like one of those big Irish farmers, huge hands,
failed suicide …‘
To
Helen it seemed nice that he had somebody with whom he could share these
thoughts. The Easter when she was thirteen the family had gone on holiday to a
rented villa in ‘Lanzarote, a shabby breezeblock cube but with a swimming pool
and everything. She’d found an old diving mask in a cupboard and had spent
hours each day floating on the warm surface gazing down into the spangly
turquoise-tiled depths, languorously twisting and turning for the eyes of her
ever-present dad.
One
day, as she drifted through the quicksilver chlorine-scented water, the
shrivelled rubber of the mask’s strap suddenly snapped, making her feel as if
she’d been shot in the head, like the rooftop swimmer in Dirty Harry, and
as she watched the mask beneath her dangling, pale feet tumbling down into the
dangerous blue depths Helen lifted her head to look around and saw that her dad
had left the poolside. She wasn’t afraid, there was no risk of her drowning,
but it just seemed there was no certainty any more and the loneliest thing in
the world was to be by yourself in a swimming pool.
That
sense of dislocation stayed with her until the last week of school before the
summer holidays. She was in the school library, hanging around in there because
this group of girls who the day before had been her best friends said they
hated her and suddenly wouldn’t talk to her any more. Seated at one of the long
shiny mahogany worktables, sunlight streaming in thick tubes through the
windows, she was pretending to work on a poem for the school magazine but
instead was flicking through one of the old Sunday Times magazines that
the librarian kept in Perspex binders. In an edition from September 1978
opposite a full-page advert for Ecko Hostess Trolleys there was a photograph,
the black and white image so grainy that it seemed at first to be of bacteria
or something; only slowly did it resolve itself into the sad face of a young
man, a young man with long black ‘hair parted in the centre. As Helen stared
into his soulful eyes she felt an unfamiliar, warm sensation at the base of her
stomach.
Flipping
over the page she greedily dived into the story. His name was Julio Spuciek,
the son of a Ukrainian father and an Argentinian mother; in the 1970s in his
native Argentina he had been
the country’s fifth most celebrated poet, the reserve international goalkeeper
and its most renowned puppeteer. For several years he had made fun of the
authorities on his enormously popular TV and radio shows assisted by his
puppets —Margarita, Tio Pajero, Abuela, El Gordo and Señor Chuckles. When, in a
bloody coup and a wave of terror, the Fascist military junta came to power,
his popularity and his socialism condemned him and he was swept up amongst the
first wave of the disappeared into the notorious prison of El Casero. Yet even
the terrible generals were reluctant to murder a man as popular as Julio
Spuciek and in time they lit on another plan. One cold winter’s day in the grey
yard of the prison of El Casero Julio Spuciek’s puppets were brought out, lined
up. one by one against the exercise yard wall and shot by firing squad.
In the
magazine there were more blurred photos: of the splintered corpses of the
puppets and further colour pictures of the mournful,
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